


end of days

by Trell (orphan_account)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Character Death, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Jaeger Pilots, LGBTQ Characters, Multi, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their headquarters are built in Hong Kong, and Castiel watches the televised unveiling of the Shatterdome with something like hope.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>A kaiju surfaces in Cabo San Lucas the day after that, and kills six thousand people.</i>
</p><p>In which the world is ending, and Castiel meets Meg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	end of days

The first kaiju attacks San Francisco when Castiel's away on business, auditing the finances of a corporation in New York City. It's a surprise commission; he hadn't been planning it.

As he sits in the office of his employer—a British corporate man named Crowley—both of them staring at the television in shock, all he can think is that if he hadn't been called up here, he'd be dead.

"Guess I saved your arse, eh?" Crowley says, a little shaky. His silk tie is twisted where he's been clutching it.

Castiel opens his mouth to answer, but in that moment the monster on the live feed smashes through the Golden Gate Bridge, taking down one of the columns, and all that comes out of Castiel's mouth is a soft little "Oh."

"Shite," Crowley breathes.

The newscaster reporting from the helicopter over the bay is crying. Castiel feels his own chest constrict with terror—disbelief—as the monster on the screen rampages towards the center of the city.

"My boyfriend lives in Bayview," he says, blankly. He wants so much to believe that this is a hoax, that it isn't happening, but they'd checked: flipped through every major news channel. Every single station is frantically broadcasting this.

The reporter on screen says something about a response from the United States Air Force, and Castiel watches as the camera swings around to get a fuzzy shot of incoming jets.

* * *

Twelve hours later, the United States still hasn't managed to bring the monster down. Bayview is a wasteland, but Castiel, curled up by then on his hotel room bed, phone in his hand so he can check periodically for messages (Balthazar hasn't picked up) and watching as the axe-headed monster smashes through skyscrapers, keeps hoping.

They're calling in the Royal Air Force for assistance, the reporter on the television says; the President has begged Great Britain for aid, and the Prime Minister has magnanimously agreed to render it. Of humanitarian programs, only the Red Cross is daring to actually enter the city.

Castiel thumbs his way to Balthazar's number in his contact list and hits call, but it just goes to voicemail, same as before.

* * *

Seven days later, when they've evacuated as much of San Francisco and the surrounding areas as they could, the United States military drops an atomic bomb on the monster.

The _kaiju,_ they're calling it, just like in Japanese monster movies.

Balthazar's name isn't on the list of evacuees.

* * *

A week after Balthazar's funeral, six months after Trespasser falls to a nuclear warhead and and takes the Bay Area with it, a second kaiju emerges from the sea in Manila. 

Castiel hears the news over the radio as he drives through (waits in) NYC rush hour traffic, and he's never felt so scared in his life.

 _The experts said there wouldn't be any more,_ he thinks. But the experts were wrong: and the kaiju will keep coming, and how many atomic bombs can they drop before the world grinds to a stop?

* * *

The Pan Pacific Defense Corps are formed in 2014, organized with the assistance of the U.N. and spearheaded by China. It includes 21 nations, draws on the minds of the world's best and brightest, enjoys the support of all the planet's major military forces.

Their headquarters are built in Hong Kong, and Castiel watches the televised unveiling of the Shatterdome with something like hope.

A kaiju surfaces in Cabo San Lucas the day after that, and kills six thousand people.

* * *

After the third use of a nuclear weapon to defend against the kaiju, Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld pitches the idea of giant mechs.

To everyone's unending surprise, it actually _works._

* * *

The call for pilots comes shortly after they build the first functioning two-person jaeger. The two Hong Kong-born women that pilot it skyrocket to fame; people flock to the recruitment centers in droves to take the tests that might qualify them for full enlistment in the Academy.

Castiel feels like a fool when he goes. He's an _accountant,_ for god's sake, he's never so much as punched anyone in his life: but he's tired of being scared, tired of sitting and waiting for a kaiju to take the life of someone else he loves, tired of watching instead of fighting.

Which is how he ends up in a crowd of people who are, for the most part, at least ten years younger than he is. _Kids,_ he thinks, some of them surely barely old enough to drive, others who should be in college, not out—fighting monsters.

He ends up gravitating towards the only other person his age he sees, a round-faced, dark-haired woman named Meg Masters that smirks and calls him Clarence once she realizes he's clueless about pop culture and unaware that she's flirting with him besides. 

"Never thought I'd be a geezer at this age, did you?" she hums, as they stand in line, surrounded by kids covered in gang signs and kids that have, Castiel realizes belatedly, _kaiju tattoos._

He feels faintly sick at the thought of their trivializing something so horrible, but he gets it: he'd seen the pilots of the first jaeger and been struck with a bit of hero worship himself. To Meg, he says, "No."

 _I also didn't expect to have my boyfriend killed by an alien monster that rose from the sea,_ he doesn't say. Everything about his life seems to be skewing towards the unexpected, these days. 

Meg asks, "Why are you doing this?" 

"Why are you?" Castiel says in return.

"Touché," Meg snorts, and doesn't pry further.

* * *

They have a Drift device in the recruitment center. It's not hooked up to a jaeger, of course—they're only now building the rest of the first series, and all the new pilots are to be fully trained by the time of their completion.

They'd attempted to hire straight out of the military, at first, but it had turned out that Drift compatibility was far more finicky than simply serving in the same army. 

They test the recruits against each other in other ways, first: put them through quizzes and games that would seem childish if they didn't know the goal in mind. (Of course, Castiel reflects, during a game of chess he's made to play against a too-clever kid from the Ivy League, there's a certain element of childish glee to the thought of piloting a giant mechanical monster.)

In this way the recruitment staff narrow them down into categories, and subcategories, and eventually into mere handfuls of people they'll actually test against each other in the Drift.

Castiel goes through it all and tries not to think too hard about the ridiculousness of this situation, of what he's _doing,_ and he's almost not surprised when his final testing group contains Meg Masters.

"Didn't think I was going to see you again, Clarence," Meg says, when they talk again during the wait for being introduced to the Drift for the first time. 

"I didn't, either," Castiel says. 

"I hope you're ready to have me inside your head," and she quirks a brow as the coordinators urge them forward.

Castiel finds he isn't nervous, for all that he's almost certain he should be.

* * *

The scientists watching from behind the glass say "Initiating neural handshake," and Castiel gasps with the force of it, the feeling of the Drift prying its way into his head from the outside, filling him up and washing him away in the flood. 

From somewhere beyond, a voice says, "Remember, don't chase the rabbit," and he struggles to focus, struggles not to get pulled into the memories that rise up to tug at him.

(Balthazar, smiling at him across a restaurant table. San Francisco as a crater. His college years; his parents, long-deceased of wholly kaiju-unrelated causes.) 

And, entirely without warning, memories that feel like his own but can't possibly be—a party he never went to, a mother he never met, a girlfriend he never had; a red-headed woman shouting and gesticulating wildly with her hands.

 _You want to get yourself killed, Meg? And what about_ me, _if you die piloting some stupid robot?_

The words bite at him as though the conflict were his own, and when the fight escalates—then breaks off entirely, turning into heated sex—the feeling emanating from the memory almost overwhelming.

A voice says, _Clarence,_ and he jolts out of the memory, _Meg's_ memory, focuses on her voice and stabilizing the link as the scientists explained. 

_Hello, Meg,_ he thinks. The image of a little girl with Meg's face grinning at him flashes through his mind, and he can feel her amusement at him, not at all malicious. He's suddenly aware of her glancing through his own memories, casual as anything, free of judgement save for a trace of pity. 

_Hi, Clarence. Roomy head you've got; sure it's not too empty?_

He laughs, not aloud, and feels the backwash of warmth from Meg in return.

* * *

The scientists declare them compatible almost an hour after they first stabilize the Drift. The gray-haired woman in charge smiles at them as the Drift device is disconnected, says, "It seems you're going to go through training after all, kids. Or not, as the case may be—you two are going to be one of the oldest pairs we've got."

"Super," Meg drawls, and Castiel finds he can still feel a twinge of her pleasure in his own head, even though the machine's fully and totally disconnected.

 _Ghost Drift,_ he thinks, and, _This is really happening._

"I'm an accountant," he blurts, to no one in particular, and the scientist woman beams.

"Not anymore," she says. "You're going to be a Ranger."

Castiel's breath catches at the words, and he sees Meg smile out of the corner of his eye, surely feeling as terrified and exhilarated as he does.

* * *

A year into their training they're taken to the Hong Kong Shatterdome and shown the jaeger they're going to be given, having proven themselves competent in training as well as in Drift compatibility.

She's—a metal monster, certainly, but _gorgeous,_ full of personality, full of, dare Castiel think it as he stands in the build area, _heart._ The techs show them blueprints of the mecha, as the hulk in progress before them is little more than a frame; when complete, it'll be sleek and fast and equipped with massive spinning blades that'll deal heavy damage to any kaiju.

Beside him, Meg breathes, "Damn, Clarence," and he can't help but agree. "We're going to fly _that_."

Castiel can hardly imagine it, but as he stares at the techs—tiny specks in the face of the jaeger's size—scuttling over his surface, he's certain it'll be unforgettable.

* * *

They're in Hong Kong again when Reckoner attacks it in 2016, and this time they're not at the Shatterdome.

They'd been visiting to see the progress on their jaeger—still unnamed, but almost complete, soon they'll christen it and run their first test drive—and gone into the city after; foolishly thinking they'd be safe, so close to the PPDC HQ, with the last kaiju emergence not so long ago.

Castiel is frozen, staring out over the ocean at the indistinct hulk that moves towards the city. He's supposed to be evacuating, supposed to be going for the nearest kaiju shelter, but his legs won't _move;_ and something in him longs to see one of these things in person, one of these things that killed Balthazar and thousands of others and threw the world into chaos even while it single-handedly acquired a strange sort of world peace. 

Meg is not with him, and he can't move, and a kaiju is coming.

Somewhere, deep down, the rational part of his brain is screaming that if he doesn't get to a shelter, he's going to die before he ever gets in a jaeger. 

_That's not the plan,_ a voice in his head says, and he jolts like he's been electrocuted.

Meg's anger and fear echoes through his head clear as day—Ghost Drift, again, but so much clearer than it's ever been before. _What the everloving fuck are you doing, Clarence?! I know you look like an angel, sweetheart, but immortal you ain't!_

"Oh, god," Castiel gasps, and finally he regains control of his limbs, finally the adrenaline kicks in, and he _runs._

He makes it to a shelter just in time, just before they slam the doors shut out and lock out anyone not fortunate enough to make it before the safety cutoff. It's tight and dank and hard to breathe, crushed between the bodies of others: and Castiel feels abruptly claustrophobic, trapped in this tiny box below the ground as a monster approaches.

He's going to die here, under the earth, a bug in a trap. His breathing comes shallow: the fearful whimpers around him seem deafening, the sobbing more so. 

The first step of the kaiju onto land rings out deep and low and shakes the whole shelter to its very foundations, and everyone goes very quiet, then, even the ones who'd been crying. 

Castiel can't breathe, but in that instant he's not sure anyone can: even his hyperventilation is stuck in his throat as he stares at the ceiling and listens.

The second great footstep rumbles through them, and people start crying again, or shrieking, or praying to any deity that will listen. 

Castiel isn't religious: even if science hadn't convinced him of the supernatural's improbability, the horrors of the kaiju emerging would have. (There's movements in all major religions these days about the kaiju signaling the end of days: in that, at least, they might be right.) 

He isn't religious, but he clasps his hands together and squeezes his eyes shut and thinks _Meg,_ crushed between people he's never met in a bunker meant for far fewer people than this, hunched beside a woman whispering under her breath in rapid Mandarin. 

The kaiju's footsteps reverberate through the city, and Castiel prays for Meg to hear, because when he dies he doesn't want to die alone.

* * *

They make it out of Hong Kong, thanks to the jaeger Lucky Seven. A year after that, their own jaeger—and their training—is completed; they ship out to the Hong Kong Shatterdome for the third time, the final time, sitting next to each other in a PPDC carrier jet in matching fatigues.

"What are we going to call her?" Meg asks. She has her phone out, displaying a photograph of their jaeger, so sleek and black that Castiel imagines it would be impossible to spot in the ocean during the nighttime. 

It's every inch the sea monster, as much as any kaiju, amphibious and predatory in design and in function. 

"What about 'Leviathan'?" he says. It seems fitting: a monster of the ocean, sent to fight worse ones of the same origin, all at the end of days. 

He's all the more certain, after last year's encounter with a kaiju from the civilian perspective, that it is the end of days, and not because of biblical ideology; and that he intends to go down fighting, not cowering and powerless. 

"I like it," Meg says. "End of days, huh?"

"End of days," Castiel agrees, and looks out the window at the ocean churning below.

* * *

The test drive of Leviathan is the most incredible thing Castiel has ever done in his life, and he can feel through the Drift that it's the same for Meg. All their losses, all their doubts, all their regrets—all these things that they've hidden and shared, harbored all their lives, fall away, are washed from the conscious by the sheer power of the machine that responds to their every movement and word.

The PPDC sends them them on a basic patrol around the Japanese coastline, and every motion, every step holds power Castiel never thought to wield. Watching the footage of previous kaiju battles hadn't prepared him at all. 

Meg whoops with delight when they make the jaeger bound around a cliff and leap, rotary blade in the arm slicing through water and air, and he shouts with her, delighted.

* * *

They fight their first kaiju in Puerto Rico at San Jose, side-by-side with another American team—brothers; the _Winchesters,_ they introduce themselves over the comm system, piloting a jaeger whimsically named Kansas Darling. 

The Winchesters manage to imply before they even reach drop point that Meg isn't suited to piloting a jaeger because she's a woman, despite the fact that a significant percentage of all jaeger pilots are. Despite the fact, even, that the first kaiju to ever go down was killed by two female pilots. 

The flare of anger that surges through Castiel is as much his own as it is Meg's, because he knows better than anyone how hard she's fought to be the best at the Academy and how much she's had to prove herself twice over to the swarms of cocky boys certain they'd be the next ones to get a jaeger commission. 

"We'll show them how to kill a fucking kaiju," Meg grits beside him, "and then wipe the floor with them on the sparring block, right, Clarence?"

"Yes," Castiel says, his nervousness assuaged by his anger, and readies for Leviathan's thunderous drop into the ocean.

 _"This kaiju,"_ their LOCCENT Officer (Charlie Bradbury; red hair, fiery attitude, a deep and abiding love for role playing games and robots and mechas of all sizes) parrots through the comm system, _"is a Category Four, nickname Fangcrusher. Big teeth, apparently, so watch out for those. Oh, and it's got horns on its arms. Ready, boys and girls?"_

"Ready," Meg and Castiel say at once, and the Winchester boys echo them from their end. Meg rolls her eyes when one of them adds, "Race ya!"

Castiel can only agree. 

It turns out a Category IV in person is a lot more terrifying than a Category IV in theory. Castiel had known this, of course, but he'd thought being inside a jaeger would be different than being inside a shelter: and it is, he has to remind himself, it is, they're as much a monster as the thing before them, and this time _he isn't alone._

Meg is worried, too, but she sends reassurance at him, anyway. 

They start up Leviathan's blade and rush Fangcrusher head-on while Kansas Darling swings around the side. 

When the kaiju brings its teeth down on Leviathan's right arm—the arm Castiel is hooked into—the pain is startling, shocking, makes both him and Meg cry out.

They'd been taught to expect this, of course, but they hadn't _known._

Fangcrusher sinks its teeth deeper.

Thirty seconds later, Kansas Darling drives its fist through Fangcrusher's left eye.

* * *

They get assigned to the Alaskan Shatterdome, in the end, because it's new and short-staffed, and kaiju are starting to target Anchorage and Seattle. 

It's cold in Alaska, and Castiel thinks he'd hate it, if they weren't here for a purpose: if they weren't here together, fighting against an onslaught of beasts that every major Judeo-Christian religion has proclaimed to have arisen from hell itself and _winning,_ unbelievably, winning again and again.

Meg kisses him for the first time after they take on their first Category V and come out victorious, grabs him by the wrists the minute he's tugged off his helmet and plants one on him.

He thinks _oh,_ because he suddenly gets what it is he's been feeling through the Drift; and he thinks of Balthazar, briefly, of standing at his funeral under an inappropriately sunny sky and setting flowers atop an empty casket. 

Then he kisses back.

* * *

They get married in Anchorage in December of 2019, while Kansas Darling fights a Category IV in Manila.

The attack is televised, of course, the fight recorded, updates broadcast all over the world; Kansas Darling is good, and her pilots (infuriating though they may sometimes be) are better. While Castiel forgets to breathe and a bored city official authorizes his and Meg's marriage license—they hadn't bothered with a ceremony—Dean and Sam Winchester pummel a kaiju's brains out on the sunny shores of the Philippines.

The footage even plays on a tv in the Anchorage city hall.

He and Meg, just this once, don't think about kaiju or jaegers at all, and she smirks at his trepidation when the license is slid across to them in its completion, kisses all his hesitancies away.

The Manila kaiju falls as he asks her, breathless, "Did we really just—?"

"We did," she says. "Meg Masters and Castiel Novak, kissing in a tree." She slides his wedding band onto his finger as he fumbles to do the same for her.

There's a lot of reasons they're doing this, chief among them the legalities in case a kaiju puts either one of them in the hospital, but looking at the gold band on his ring finger, Castiel can only remember the ones that start with 'I love you'. 

So he says it to her—aloud, and again through the Ghost Drift, and again with his mouth and his hands.

She laughs and wraps her arms around his neck and gives back as good as she gets, calls him _Clarence_ like she always does, poking fun at how earnest he is: and they leave to go back to the Shatterdome joined, hand-in-hand, promises exchanged to each other without the hassle of speaking, bands on their fingers showing the world that they're copilots, they're _each other's,_ 'til death by kaiju they part.

* * *

They hear about Sam Winchester's death in 2020. Dean Winchester quits the Corps after that, to no one's great surprise: Castiel doesn't want to think about what it would be like to lose Meg, much less while in the Drift together.

There's a funeral held at the Los Angeles Shatterdome, which they attend. When they get back to the Icebox even Meg's sharp humor seems muted, and Castiel feels distant, the fear of their losing one another heavy on his mind.

They make love that night out desperation—out of fear—because the day brings about the reminder that their world is surely dying. Meg pins him down, draws out his fears with touch and visceral pleasure: he accepts hers in return, holds tight to the tenuous connection of the Ghost Drift and sends along every emotion and sensation he feels. 

"It's the end of the world," he murmurs, after, when he's spent and she's slumped atop him in contented exhaustion. "It's the end of the world, we're losing to the kaiju, and our colleagues are dropping like flies. I should not be so _happy._ "

Meg scrunches up her nose and pinches his side, making him squirm. "You've always been too serious, Clarence," she says. "Did you miss the memo? We're supposed to party our last days away. Do all the things we've always planned to do but never got around to."

"I don't think I planned on any of _this,_ " he says, meaning them, and the Jaeger Program, and everything he's done to come from being a tax accountant in San Francisco to being one of Earth's last defenders. Meg has come just as far, from a broken relationship with her girlfriend and a job in IT for a company she hated; has worked twice as hard to do it, proven herself and become a symbol for girls in every nation.

He gets another jab in the ribs for his trouble. "I don't regret it!" he explains, quickly. "Not any of it."

"Going down fighting hand-in-hand with the pretty boy you met by accident is a good way to go," Meg agrees, and her smug smile is infectious. "We're giving someone else one last chance to party hard, every time we take one of those fuckers down."

"That's good," he says. He wonders if he'd have still been able to do anything but be afraid, if he were still just a civilian: he suspects not. Apropos of the thought, he says, "Thank you."

"Mmm, always," Meg says. "What for?" 

"For giving me 'one last chance to party hard'," he mimics, the words silly in his rough voice, and kisses her before she has a chance to bust her gut laughing.

* * *

The PPDC starts to build the Anti-Kaiju Wall later that year. Castiel is skeptical, and Meg more so. 

"We're gone up against those things, we know what they're like," she says vehemently to their Marshal. "Why does the PPDC think this'll work? I've looked at the specs, and they're not on par."

Their Marshal—Naomi, tough as nails and twice as overworked—only says, "The U.N. is leaning on us." And they are: slashing Jaeger Program funding, slowing in building more, diverting resources to the other projects. Only a very small fraction seems to actually go towards the Wall.

"They're going to get us all killed," Meg spits.

Castiel refrains from saying that it was only a matter of time.

* * *

Five years later the Icebox has been shut down, Leviathan's been transferred to Hong Kong, and they're one of the last four jaeger teams to remain in operation.

Sydney and a dozen other coastal cities are ablaze with revolts and revolution; fear-driven riots against governments that would sacrifice their people to appropriate funds (or so everyone at the Hong Kong Shatterdome suspects) for the protection of themselves and their upper class.

Meg is angry and irritable and incapable of changing a damn thing; and Castiel is tired, tired of losing and tired of watching the world crumble not because of the kaiju but because of humanity's own folly.

Both of them channel their frustration into slaughtering every kaiju to come spewing out of the breach and pretend—mostly for the sake of Marshal Linda Tran, who approaches this Shatterdome's operation with an attitude of having the world bend to her wishes by sheer force of will.

This is it, Castiel thinks every day: this is the day they'll fall to a kaiju, and then there'll be three jaegers left, and then two, and then one, and then just an ineffectual wall and nothing but desolation. The Jaeger Program, the _world,_ will go out just as predicted by dour poetry ages ago: with a whimper, not with a bang.

Then Kansas Darling appears in the Shatterdome's repair arena.

Linda Tran calls them up to the ops deck and says, "We have a plan."

* * *

The plan is to drop a nuclear warhead on the breach when it's temporarily stable.

The plan is to have them carry that warhead there.

The plan is, probably, _insane._

It's the first hope they've had in a long time, anyway.

* * *

Dean Winchester arrives at the Shatterdome without fanfare and without a copilot. Castiel catches a look at him as he heads to the sparring grounds to find a compatible match; he's more attractive than he was on the vid feeds or than he sounded, and mellowed by grief and the passage of time.

Castiel's more than a little enamored when Dean shakes his hand and expresses genuine excitement about Leviathan's kill count. 

He blushes about it, later, when Meg reminds him, "He insulted your wife, you know. Aren't you usually better at not thinking with your dick?" Her voice drips irritation.

The Ghost Drift sends him mixed signals, though. "Oh, my god," he says, when the realization dawns. "You think me and him would be _hot,_ don't you."

The grin that graces Meg's features is scimitar. "So hot," she says. "I'd watch while he bent you over every available surface inside Leviathan, then have my wicked way with you both."

Castiel is sure he fairly glows red with embarrassment and arousal at her words, but the thought does prove an ample distraction from the fact that Linda Tran's plan is probably suicidal.

* * *

(Meg's idea happens exactly once, after all three of them get exceptionally drunk one night in the commissary. Meg invites Dean on a tour of Leviathan and things—well; they escalate, as they are wont to do.)

After, when Castiel is lying between them on the floor of Leviathan, Meg asks, "How's that for going out with a bang?"

Dean actually groans aloud at the pun, and covers his face. Castiel laughs, though, long and loud, and only in part at the absurdity of bringing that up now; which is probably why he and Meg are the ones with the matching wedding rings, after all.

* * *

Dean gets his copilot in the form of Linda Tran's son. They almost get disqualified from piloting together when Kevin chases the rabbit, nearly blasting the Shatterdome to bits with Kansas Darling's plasma cannon in the process; the kaiju attack on Hong Kong forces them to come to the rescue, though, and that time their run is successful enough to change Linda's mind.

Of the four deployed, Leviathan and Kansas Darling are the only two to return.

"Guess we'll only have you watching our back," Meg says to Dean and Kevin, as they ready to go. "You think you can handle that?"

Dean says, "Yeah. Yeah, we can." Kevin nods. The Shatterdome is abuzz with activity: with hope, maybe. Even Charlie, who transferred with them from the Icebox, seems more cheerful than usual.

When Castiel catches Dean's eye, though, he sees his own morbidity reflected—and knows, without being told, that none of them are going to make it back.

* * *

They're about to die.

Leviathan's systems are going critical, all levels in the red; and their plan is wrong, somehow, the scientists said, though Castiel doesn't care about the details now. It's too late for them to matter.

Scunner and Slattern are circling.

Kansas Darling has a bomb for a heart.

 _They don't need their thermonuclear warhead anymore._ The thought is in Meg's mind at the same time as his, synchronized in the Drift.

"With a bang, Meg?" he breathes.

"With a bang, Clarence," she answers, and her eyes are very wide and very dark in the flashing red emergency lights. "Cas."

Castiel's heart breaks for the fact that they will never get to have a future: for the fact that they'll never have a high-rise apartment somewhere sunny (and not at all like Alaska), for the fact that she'll never become a doctor like she always planned to do with the money she earned, for the sunset years that will never be.

He doesn't say _I love you;_ just sends it coursing through the Drift, immediate and thorough. She answers back, and the emotion swallows him whole.

"Good luck," Castiel says into the comm. _I hope this is worth it. I hope I can trust you._

He looks at Meg. They're Drifting more closely than they ever have, consuming each other, becoming one mind and not two connected; going down fighting together, and it is infinitely better than dying disconnected and afraid, it _is._

Meg hits the detonator.

The Drift takes them like an offering: they are one and the same as the blast hits.

A single light, winking out.

**Author's Note:**

> A sketch of Leviathan is [here](http://trelldraws.tumblr.com/post/58213715309/leviathan-mark-i-united-states). Sketches of Castiel are [here](http://trelldraws.tumblr.com/post/58386522378/castiel-novak-leviathan-commissioned-2016) and [here](http://trelldraws.tumblr.com/post/58546084529/drawing-cas-in-cherno-alpha-outfits-an-ongoing).


End file.
